(A) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an electronic apparatus, more specifically, to an electronic apparatus identifying surrounding environment by means of image processing and outputting the result for use by the blind people.
(B) Description of Related Art
The welfare of handicapped people has become a major focus in the modern society. For example, many apparatuses and facilities used by the blind people, such as guide stick, guide dog, or acoustic alarm set at busy intersections, have been invented and made it much easier for the blind people to walk around. However, each of the above mentioned apparatuses and facilities has different drawbacks. Conventional guide stick can only detect ground condition in front of the user but cannot provide information in a range. Guide dog cannot “tell” the user what is happening in front of him/her so as to prepare in advance. Moreover, the cost to train and maintain a guide dog is relatively high so that it is not affordable for many people. As for preset landmarks, such as acoustic alarm and speech guide, only installing them at a few intersections is useless, as all intersections must be rebuilt to include the preset landmarks, which will result in high cost.
Because of advances of electronic technology, many patents focus on improvements of conventional blind guiding apparatuses, such as Taiwan Patent Publication No. 563525, entitled “Traffic Guiding Apparatus for Blind people.” Tactile tiles for guiding blind people in intersections are magnetizable and the magnetism can be “activated” when the traffic light is red so as to attract special guide stick and shoes and notify the user of the red traffic signal ahead. However, besides the fact that all blind people must wear special shoes or use special guide sticks, it still has the disadvantage of “landmarks” aforementioned.
Taiwan Patent Publication No. 518965, entitled “Speech Guide Glasses”, disclosed glasses comprising a sensor and a speech earphone. The sensor has two functions. The first function is to sense the color of traffic light in front of the user and notify the user. The second function is to detect obstacles ahead by receiving reflected IR beam sent out by the sensor. The information is then output by the earphone. After a brief review, we are of the opinion that this invention has the following suspicious points:                1. This invention utilizes RGB filter to process the received light prior to recognizing traffic light. However, it should be understood that all visible light could be decomposed into RGB primary colors. If the recognition of traffic light is based on the images after RGB filtering, we can predict that the data flow for recognition will be enormously large, which is not a good technical solution for traffic light recognition.        2. Even if computer can process such an enormous data flow real-time, it is still a fact that the result of RGB filtering changes with environmental light condition. Therefore, the analyzing result based on RGB filtering will not be accurate.        3. The invention can only detect traffic lights and obstacles in front of the user but has nothing to do with flat marks and lines on the street. However, as we can see in everyday life, flat marks and lines are frequently used for providing information and guidance.        
The inventor of the present application is familiar with pattern recognition and computer vision. Based on his specialty, the present invention is a practical solution for the disadvantages of prior art aforementioned.